Monday, April 10, 2006

Queers! They’re Just Like Us!

200 gay families are scheduled to attend the White House Easter Egg Roll, wearing rainbow leis to identify themselves, but otherwise attempting to blend in with the rest of the “normal” parents.

We have to say, we’d like to see a lot more of this kind of political statement. It reminds us of Rosie O’Donnell’s documentary about her “R Family Cruises.” The doc, which was screened on Showtime this week, has been criticized for whitewashing the gay families depicted – for turning our sexuality, normally outrageous and spicy, into something vanilla. We disagree with this criticism. There are MORE THAN enough opportunities for us to show off our flare, and what makes us different. Gay pride parades, gay television, gay rallies, gay bars, the Barney’s Warehouse Sale, etc.

But if we’re going to make a stink about how we want the same rights to have families as everyone else, at some point we have to start reaching out to the people we’re trying to convince and show them: “Hey, while we are proud of what makes us different, our families are going to show the SAME kind of love and support that yours do.” If we want our families to be like theirs (legal marriage, legal adoption, legal inheritance), it’s really important to prove to them (and to ourselves for that matter) that these traditional forms make sense for us. So thanks, Rosie, we hope more people will follow in your footsteps.

And as for the Egg Roll, we don’t know why gay families didn’t think of this earlier. Looking for sparkly candy and rainbow dyed eggs in the midst of a well manicured Rose Garden? Those little gaybies have been training for this moment since they were born!*

*By “since they were born,” of course, we mean, “since their $20,00 hand-selected Ivy League donor egg was inseminated in a tube with the mixed semen of their two dads and injected in the uterus of a $5,000-a-month surrogate.”